Il8 TALKS ABOUT THE SOIL. 



difference whatever. If you have two different kinds 

 of soil, you can raise in these every variety of plant 

 to be found in any common greenhouse or in any 

 window in a dwelling-house. 



Suppose we take a geranium. We wish to have it 

 grow and bloom in the house. We might take the 

 flower-pot to the garden, and fill it with soil, and in 

 this plant our geranium. It might live and even grow, 

 but it would grow far better if we prepared a special 

 soil for it. The soil of a garden is usually too heavy, 

 has too much clay, and is comparatively poor and 

 exhausted. If we pull up a geranium in the garden, 

 we shall find it has extended its roots in every direc- 

 tion, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches on each side 

 of the stem. If this same plant is to live in a pot, it 

 is plain the roots must be very much cramped and 

 crowded. Consequently we must do something to 

 make up for this, and we make the soil placed in the 

 pot very rich. Take a plant that has been growing for 

 some time in a pot, and, holding it upside down in 

 the hand, gently tap the edge of the pot on a bench 

 or table. The plant easily slips out of the pot, and 

 we see its roots have twisted themselves round and 

 round in the pot in their search for food in the soil. 

 If the plant has been growing in the pot for a long 

 time, the soil will seem to have greatly changed. We 

 may shake all the loose soil out of the matted roots, 

 and find only a small part of the original soil per- 

 haps not enough to half fill the empty flower-pot. If 

 we take this old soil out of a pot where a plant has 



